Local groups join protest against manure on snow

Sunday

Apr 13, 2014 at 2:00 PM

By Daily Telegram staff

Local environmental groups and the Adrian Dominican Sisters are part of a Great Lakes coalition asking Michigan to prohibit large livestock operations from spreading manure on frozen or snow-covered ground.

The coalition of Great Lakes groups recently called on the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to add a rule against winter manure applications as it revises a general permit for concentrated animal feeding operations.

“When CAFO manure flows off fields in late winter, there’s terrible collateral damage,” Janet Kauffman, coordinator of water-monitoring projects for the Hudson-based Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, said in a news release from the coalition. “It fertilizes algae and toxins, not a crop,” she said.

Much of that collateral damage has been to beaches, fisheries and drinking-water supplies, Kauffman said.

Municipal water systems having intake pipes in Lake Erie have reported costs and difficulties associated with removing the toxin microcystin from lake water, she said. Toledo reported spending $4 million in 2013 alone to remove the toxin. In Carroll Township, Ohio, unsafe levels of microcystin in the drinking water after treatment prompted a do-not-drink order and an emergency shutdown of the system.

“The studies confirm what we already know: applying manure on frozen ground in the winter is bad for the Great Lakes, plain and simple,” stated Lyman Welch, Water Quality Program director for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

“The practice of winter application of CAFO manure is long outdated,” said Nic Clark, state director, Michigan Clean Water Action. “We have the technology today to modernize practices to reduce springtime runoff and better protect our local waterways.”

Officials from Wisconsin-based Milk Source Inc. have said they do not apply manure to frozen ground in the company’s home state and will not do it in Michigan. Milk Source purchased the former Vreba-Hoff dairies near Hudson and is preparing to reopen them this year.

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